True Calling: The Most Unheralded Servants in a Church

When people think of working for the church or any religious organization, they usually envision being a preacher or a missionary, one who teaches and does good deeds for a living. They typically believe that working full-time for a church also means that there is nothing else on their job description except dealing directly and solely with the congregation that the church ministers to.

However, a church remains an institution that cannot be separated from the secular world, especially in legal terms. Thus, there are many positions and practices in a church that are not so different from those you will see in any other company — administration, accounting, and many more. You’ll likely find a church accounting practice in Southlake, TX.

This is especially true in areas such as Southlake, Texas and the rest of the Southern United States, where churches range from small-town congregations to megachurches. Without non-teachers willing to do these tasks, a church could probably not survive its week-to-week activities.

Here are some of the back-office personnel who keep the church running on a regular basis:

Accounting and Finance

With all the tithes, offerings, and donations a church collects every week, there must be someone to keep track of the money that is coming in. Hence, a church needs to have full-time accountants and finance officers employed in order to manage the day-to-day income and expenditures of the church. Moreover, though it is a tax-exempt organization, many churches still prepare financial statements to promote transparency. Churches that do not have anyone qualified to fill this position may ask for assistance from various firms offering support to non-profits, but it is always best to have someone to double-check the information’s accuracy from within the organization

Administration and Secretariat

Even preachers do not work solely on Sundays; on weekdays, they still attend meetings, plan sermons, attend speaking engagements, and maybe even do some counseling. With such a busy schedule, they need somebody to help them take note of where they need to be and when. This is the role of the office assistants and secretaries, who are in charge of booking meetings, reserving rooms, and making sure the only thing preachers have to worry about is what to do for their sermons.

Engineering and Maintenance

Have you ever been in service while construction was going on, or the sound system just did not want to work? If you remember the experience, preventing such scenarios is why every church needs a building engineer to be in charge of maintaining church facilities. Their responsibility is to ensure that everything in the church building is always working, from the air conditioning to the toilets, in order to ensure the congregation is comfortable.

Moreover, as the building is a symbol of the church itself, the leadership would always want to have it maintained well and looking clean, with nothing broken or non-functional. A building engineer also supervises any upgrades, improvements, and repairs made to the building. Without a building engineer, it is safe to say that the congregational crowd on Sundays would definitely not be the same.

The very presence of everyday jobs such as these illustrates that working for a church is not limited to those who are particularly gifted at speaking or teaching. Anyone, as long as they have the willingness to serve, can be welcome in a church or any non-profit organization. After all, it is this inclusivity that makes a church what it is in the first place.